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'Iron Man 3' U.K. Premiere Pushed Back for Margaret Thatcher Funeral

Disney will open the film on April 18, a day later than originally panned, as Britain braces itself for potential civil unrest.

LONDON – Disney has pushed back the U.K. premiere of Iron Man 3 by a day to allow for the funeral for the former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

The studio has moved the premiere, scheduled for April 17, the date of Thatcher's funeral, to April 18 in order to avoid the anticipated fallout from an event that will include a lengthy procession from the Houses of Parliament in central London to St Paul's Cathedral.

The film's stars Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow are still rostered to be in town to stroll the red carpet outside the cinema in Leicester Square in London.

Iron Man 3 is scheduled to rollout across the U.K. from April 26.

Thatcher's funeral is being touted in some quarters of the U.K. media as having the potential to light the touch paper of civil unrest here.

With anarchists taking to online forums and social media abuzz with calls for protest in Trafalgar Square, a location within touching distance of Leicester Square, the British capital is bracing itself for any fallout on the day.

Security for the funeral is reported to be a massive undertaking with the Metropolitan police operation carried out under the watch of commander David Martin, head of the British capital police force's public order unit.

He has a counter-terrorism background.

Thatcher, the conservative politician and the first and only woman to lead the U.K. government to date, was 87 and died of a stroke earlier this week.

The last five days have seen her legacy the subject of heated debate across the media new and old, rousing a good deal of strong emotion from both sides of the political spectrum.

She was famous and notorious in equal measure among many voters in the U.K. and political observers around the globe becoming one of the most recognizable world leaders and media figures of her time. She often was seen as a close ally of then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan.